by From Grazia Ietto-Gillies The business media is awash with news about transnational companies (TNCs) be they in the services or manufacturing or agriculture sector. The news may refer to performance or strategies or plans for real investment (or the lack of them) or takeovers. There is currently also considerable interest in their tax minimization strategies. Yet economics textbooks and courses are still shying away from this most relevant part of our contemporary economies. This is true of both orthodox/neoclassical approaches and – I regret to say – of alternative ones as a quick analysis of textbooks recommended in the WEA Pedagogy page shows. It could be argued that the nationality of the investor, employer, or producer does not matter: a firm is a firm and the task of economics is to study it independently of where it invests or its nationality. I have argued (Ietto-Gillies, 2004 and 2012: introduction and Ch. 14) that the existence of nation-states with their different regulatory regimes makes a specific study of the TNC necessary. The regulatory regimes refer to taxation or labour and social security or currencies or environmental laws. The differences in regulatory regimes across different countries generate opportunities for alternative, profitable strategies for firms able to operate across national frontiers.
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from Grazia Ietto-Gillies
The business media is awash with news about transnational companies (TNCs) be they in the services or manufacturing or agriculture sector. The news may refer to performance or strategies or plans for real investment (or the lack of them) or takeovers. There is currently also considerable interest in their tax minimization strategies.
Yet economics textbooks and courses are still shying away from this most relevant part of our contemporary economies. This is true of both orthodox/neoclassical approaches and – I regret to say – of alternative ones as a quick analysis of textbooks recommended in the WEA Pedagogy page shows.
It could be argued that the nationality of the investor, employer, or producer does not matter: a firm is a firm and the task of economics is to study it independently of where it invests or its nationality. I have argued (Ietto-Gillies, 2004 and 2012: introduction and Ch. 14) that the existence of nation-states with their different regulatory regimes makes a specific study of the TNC necessary. The regulatory regimes refer to taxation or labour and social security or currencies or environmental laws. The differences in regulatory regimes across different countries generate opportunities for alternative, profitable strategies for firms able to operate across national frontiers. Such operations allow the TNC to take advantage of different fiscal, currency or labour and social security or environmental regulations. Most relevant, transnationality increases the bargaining power of TNCs over labour as we see on an almost daily basis throughout the world. On the fiscal side the advantages that TNCs derive from their tax minimization strategies are partly linked to strategic location of their headquarters in tax-friendly countries and partly to the widely used manipulation of transfer prices (Eden, 2001; OECD, 2010). read more